The following interview appeared in Down Beat Mag. in February 1979. It was written by Burt Korall and provides an insight into Tal's life in music and the players who influences him.

Tal Farlow - the name must strike a positive chord if you've been listening to jazz for a while. Before absenting himself from the limelight, this guitarist brought to the music a flock of fascinating ideas, an innovation or two, flashing technique and more than a little of himself.

In all, Tal was on the scene a little over ten years. The 1950s, the Eisenhower decade, was his time. During this period he had a strong effect on fans and his colleagues, making memorable music with the Red Norvo Trio, the Artie Shaw Gramercy Five and his own trio, featuring explosively talented Eddie Costa on piano and creative Vinnie Burke on bass.

His career prospects were excellent. He was at his peak. Then quite suddenly - or at least it seemed so at the time - Tal picked up his marbles in 1958 and went home. He got away from the big city and its nonsensical hustle, while escaping the "show biz" aspects of jazz so repugnant to him.

"Perhaps I was meant to be away from New York and places like that," Tal says, adding: "I got fed up with the backstage parts of the jazz life, the 'business' relationships, the pushing and shoving. It seemed that I became increasingly involved with stuff that had nothing to do with music. Though I wanted to continue playing, I couldn't deal with all the other things. So I made a change.

"I moved to Sea Bright on the Jersey Shore with my wife. I like it there. It's quiet and peaceful. It feels right to me. I do things around the house, tinker with tape recorders and boats. I teach a bit and sometimes get out and play, mostly locally. Every once in a while I make a record or appear at a festival.

"I'm not really a part of the scene," he continues. "It may sound unusual to you, but I never felt like a professional musician. I never had any desire to be a leader, either. I just wanted to play guitar. I guess I got into the whole thing by accident, anyway."

Tall, quiet, reserved, basically shy, Tal had a sign painting and display business in Greensboro, North Carolina, when he heard Charlie Christian on network radio with Benny Goodman in 1940. It was an extraordinarily striking experience that changed the course of his life.

"Christian made music important to me," the guitarist says. "I rearranged the schedule at my shop so I could work nights and listen to band remotes from places like the Panther Room of Chicago's Sherman House, the Pennsylvania Hotel in New York, Frank Dailey's Meadowbrook in New Jersey and the Hollywood Palladium.

"I became very familiar with Miller, the Dorseys, Basie, Glen Gray and a number of other bands. But Christian was the one who got me moving. I bought all the Goodman/Christian recordings and memorised Charlie's choruses, note-for-note, playing them on a second-hand $14 guitar and $20 amplifier. Though a late starter for music-I was 22 in 1940-I sure was fascinated."

Tal kept listening to the radio and progressively enlarged his record collection. Lester Young became a favourite and major influence. After a little while, the budding guitarist noted a link between Christian and the President of the tenor men.

"The conception, feeling and phrasing of their music have a lot in common," Tal asserts. "I believe Prez was the father of the legato style. Most guys weren't too subtle and didn't play those long lines before his records got around.

"With Prez I went through the same process as I had with Christian. I committed his solos to memory-from the blue Decca discs and many of the Basie Okeh and Columbia recordings. I had special favourites - Lady Be Good, from Prez' first recording session in 1936, with the small band: Basie, Jo Jones, Walter Page and trumpeter Carl Smith; that one and Taxi War Dance, Texas Shuffle, Every Tub, Jumpin' At The Woodside, Jive At Five. They all helped me learn what and how to play.

"Much of what I was listening to wasn't that complicated. Christian's compositions for the Goodman Sextet were mostly blues, with a bit of I Got Rhythm and Honeysuckle Rose thrown in. It was after hearing Coleman Hawkins and Art Tatum that new worlds opened up. As I became aware of the chord and interval possibilities, I realised there was much more to music than I ever thought.

"I couldn't believe it when I first caught Tatum," Tal remembers. "I was working late one night. I had my little radio on. I moved the dial and came across this pianist who sounded like three or four guys playing at once. Even as dumb as I was harmonically, never having listened to far-out harmonies and changes, I knew something marvellous was happening.

"Begin The Beguine, Rosetta - they played about four sides in a row without any commentary in between. I thought to myself, 'If they don't say who it is soon, I'm in trouble.' Finally the announcer said, 'You've been listening to the piano artistry of Art Tatum.' I took the sign brush and wrote his name on the easel on my work-table. It's probably still there. The next day I went to see the music store guy down the street and ordered Tatum's records."

Living in a small Southern town, Tal had few friends with whom he could share his enthusiasm for jazz. There was a clarinettist, named Paul Bell. And when Greensboro became an Air Corps base, he met pianist Jimmy Lyon.

"Jimmy and I got real friendly. He was very much into Tatum, too. We talked a good deal and made plans to form a group when he got out of the service. Eventually we went to New York together, from Philadelphia.

"How did I get to Philly? Well, during the war, more and more musicians were being drafted. Even territory bands needed players.

I was 4F and got in with this group that was based in Philadelphia. A drummer named Billy Banks led the band. He lost his bass player. There were no bassists around Greensboro, so he hired me.

"I hadn't been playing too long, about two years," Farlow recalls. "Couldn't read a lick. Still can't. I joined the musicians' union, which was run by the fire department; most of the town's players were in the firemen's band. I left town with Banks but allowed my sign business to continue functioning, in case something went wrong. In fact, I commuted back and forth.

"After a little while, I met people in Philadelphia and got calls for various kinds of work, mostly with trios in cocktail lounges. Guitar was big. Piano, bass, guitar seemed the most popular instrumentation."

Word began to spread about Tal Farlow, even at that early juncture in his career. Dardanelle, the pianist and vibraharpist who had a little group in Richmond, heard about the guitarist and contacted him.

"I was back home in Greensboro, not making any plans to go any place. When Dardanelle sounded me, I went up to Richmond and played for her. I guess she liked what sheheard. I joined the trio. Paul Edinfield was the bassist. We made our way north, playing Baltimore, Philadelphia, then New York.

"It was my first visit to the Apple," Tal explains. "We played the Copa Lounge for six months. It was a great time to be in town. Charlie Parker was giving off sparks, influencing every young player in sight. I'll never forget the first time I heard him at the Three Deuces on 52nd Street. It was fireworks, like hearing Tatum.

"From that time on, I was at the club as much as possible. On my Monday night off at the Copa, I was at the Deuces before anyone else, waiting for Bird to show. Sometimes he didn't, so the guy who ran the place put up a sign advertising other musicians who weren't there, either. Just to get people to come in."

Three years later, Tal worked at the Deuces with ex-Woody Herman vibraharpist Margie Hyams, opposite Parker. He listened in awe whenever the great man was on the scene. One evening he recalls most vividly as a bit of a circus.

"Bird came storming into the club after a lengthy absence. The management tried to get him up on the stand immediately. He wouldn't be rushed. We were standing in the rear of the place. Margie, Miles Davis, AI Haig, Curley Russell and I watched the comedy unfold. Bird had some sardines and crackers and was eating them with a sense of relish, while the management pleaded with him to come to the stand. They got to the point where they were cajoling and begging him. He kept offering them sardines and crackers. We laughed 'til our sides hurt. Finally he came out and played.

"When he was doing his thing, there was no comedy," Tal avers. "He knew his instrument so well, it was so much a part of him, he could play anything he had in mind. The connection between his fingers and thoughts was that direct."

Like many young musicians of the time, Tal became deeply involved with Bird's tunes, his new changes on standards, his feeling and phrasing, and the lightning tempo the boppers brought to jazz. And Farlow played every chance he got.

"It was pretty hectic. At one point I was performing all night on 52nd St. and working a nine to five job in the display department at Goldsmith Brothers, a store in Manhattan.

"At the beginning," Tal reports, "I had some difficulty getting into what Bird and Diz and Miles and those fellows were doing. Because I came from Charlie Christian and played essentially in his style, I found the bop phrases didn't fall easily on the guitar. But I kept listening and working out my problems until I felt comfortable with the modern idiom."

"Practising? I was unorthodox then and still am. I practice only what I expect to play on the job. No scales, arpeggios or exercises. I don't recommend my method. But that's what I do. Not being able to read, playing entirely by ear, might have something to do with the way I prepare myself to play."

From whom did he learn the most? Tal mentions that Artie Shaw was an excellent musician, that he absorbed a good deal from Shaw and from pianist Hank Jones while with Shaw's Gramercy Five in 1953-54. But he insists Red Norvo was the key to his development.

"Red was a great teacher. I spent a-bout five years with him off and on in the 1950s. He kept feeding me knowledge. Talk about technique! Red was really fast. He loved to play 'up', especially when we got Mingus in the group.

"I was no faster than the next guy until I went with Red," Tal says. "Those little arrangements he had played in the Woody Herman band really were tests. I had to work like crazy, just to keep up with Red and Mingus - they forced me into the woodshed. I kept practising until I could play with them without any trouble. By the time we made our first records, I was ready."

With the Norvo trio, first with Charles Mingus then Red Mitchell on bass, Farlow defined who and what he was. It became apparent to the jazz community that a major player had emerged.

Tal had assimilated Christian and Young, particularly their manner of accentuation and linear propensities. He also understood the implications and techniques involved in the Parker-Gillespie music. Farlow brought to the Norvo trios music a quickness of response lifted by extraordinary technical resources. His ideas and articulation were one. He often resorted to double-timing to get in all he had to say.

His performances on Norvo trio Savoy recordings recently reissued by Arista are harmonically venturesome and sometimes rhythmically complicated, but his playing never sounds unnatural. He often refers to the blues and to the back-country areas where he was reared. Like Red, he has a love for melody and it flows through his commentary. Even as he moves afield and abstracts an improvised sequence, the melody somehow lingers, simmering just below the surface.

"I guess I'm always looking for good melodies, the good tunes with unusual harmonies," Tal says. "When I played club dates with society bands, I got into this thing where I would seek out particularly interesting obscure tunes to play. It kept me from being bored."

When Tal cut loose from Red, he played periodically with his own trio in New York. The Unit's home was The Composer, a now defunct jazz room on Manhattan's East 58th St. Eddie Costa and Vinnie Burke worked hand in glove with their guitarist /leader.

Tal was then in excellent form. Penetrating on ballads, he was awesome on the faster tunes. Costa's ability to improvise with enormous energy and imagination often made the evenings unforgettable. Vinnie held everything together in an unobtrusive manner, making pertinent comments when his turn came.

Like many good things in music, the trio didn't last long enough to truly take hold. It was here and gone, and those of us who heard it didn't realise how good it was until it no longer existed. Vinnie went his own way; Eddie died a few years later in an auto accident. Tal moved to Sea Bright. His residence in the centre of things was over.

For several years, there was silence. Tal's contract with Norman Granz's Verve label ran out in 1960. No one knew for sure what he was doing. It was almost as if he had never been.

"During that period, I worked in New Jersey," Tal explains. "I played all kinds of jobs. Many of them had nothing to do with jazz. Most of the time the players didn't know me. I felt there was no necessity to concentrate entirely on jazz. I found I could have fun playing a variety of jobs, as long as I didn't have to read. "

Finally in 1967 Tal came out for a while. Jazz disc jockey Mort Fega brought the guitarist back into the foreground, if only temporarily.

"It was difficult to persuade him, but finally he decided to make the move," Mort says. "The man is truly modest, self-effacing, reticent. He has no idea of the extent of his talent

Tal picks up the story.

"Mort got me together with pianist Johnny Knapp. Johnny, who has the same kind of rolling power and sensitivity that Costa had, was working at the Little Club in Roslyn, Long Island. Mort drove me out and I sat in with John, Ray Alexander - the vibes man - and drummer Mousey Alexander. It felt pretty good. Then John came out to my house at the shore and we got into some things. He suggested 'a doctor who plays real good bass.' That turned out to be Lyn Christie. We played together, got to know one another, then began work at the Frammis on New York's East Side - a gig Mort had set up for us."

The jazz audience found the trio exhilarating. Tal's playing hadn't essentially changed. Sharp, together and more mature, many evenings he was fantastic, tapping a variety of feelings. Because of his reticent personality, he seldom drew attention to himself, instead allowing his colleagues to open up, encouraging an exchange of ideas.

As New York Times critic John S. Wilson pointed out, "He is heard less as a soloist with accompaniment than as part of an ensemble. His electric guitar and Mr. Knapp's piano are constantly dancing around each other in musical conversations full of delightfully responsive passages."

"Some great music was made during the Frammis engagement," Mort Fega notes. "It would have been great to record Tal live. But I wasn't able to prevail upon him to allow it."

A flash and Tal was gone again.

He emerged briefly in 1969 to make an excellent record which Don Schlitten produced for Prestige. Then titled The Return Of Tal Farlow, now included in the Prestige two-fer Tal Farlow - Guitar Player, it features a small group of players with close rapport: Alan Dawson (drums), John Scully (piano) and Jack Six (bass). Dawson and Scully are frequently quite surprising and Six does his job particularly well.

As for Tal, it is as if he had never been away from the scene. Impressive ideas, generally expressed with great clarity, identify his performances. The up-tempo items are bursting with juice, while his ballad work further reveals his ability with harmonies. Farlow in '69 was still a musician of consequence.

During the past decade, (1969 - 1979) Tal has been in and out of things. He participated in several albums produced by Schlitten, including the late Sonny Criss' Up, Up And Away for Prestige and Sam Most's Mostly Flute for Xanadu. Recently there have been two Farlow albums on Concord, and Tal has played the Newport and Concord festivals, touring a bit with a Newport group.

But for all intents and purposes, he is a part-time player. A homebody, Tal stays close to his Sea Bright base, doing most of his musical work locally. For a while he was at the Blue Water Inn. More recently, he was the attraction at The Quay in the seaport town.

Has he been listening to much music?

"Some. Enough to tell you that Joe Pass and George Benson are playing great, and that there are some young guitarists who are frightening. As for pop players, I really don't know what most of them are doing. The volume puts me off. I just haven't heard anybody working in the rock or pop style that makes me ask 'Who's that?'

"My own playing? Sometimes I think it's changed with the times until I listen to the old records. I guess I'm pretty much the same, except I don't perform as much as I once did. Sometimes the lay-offs affect my work, other times they don't."

The future for Tal Farlow, according to the man himself, probably will be much like his recent past. "Looks like I'll stay around home. I have no idea when I'll play in the big city again. This past year was a difficult one for me. I had a lot of illness in my family and spent a great deal of time down south in North Carolina.

"I still tinker," he adds. "I guess I forgot to, tell you about this electronic frequency divider I've put together. It's built into the stool I use. Tell you what happens when I perform: I play a note, the divider lowers it one octave and the new note mixes in the amplifier with the original note, giving the effect of another instrument playing along with the guitar one octave down.

"The wiring of my Gibson guitar is a little different to make it possible to get this effect. But the instrument can still be played in a conventional manner. Generally I take the divider on the job with me. It can make the evening quite enjoyable."

"I like trying for new sounds, experimenting with the instrument," Tal says. "You know about my interest in electronics. It's one of the things that keeps me stimulated and busy. I'm into a bunch of things."

"High on my list is playing. But fortunately, I don't have to be out there, dealing with situations I find difficult to handle. I don't need expensive things or a hectic life. So I stay in Sea Bright.